July in Tuscany: Horses, Opera, and Blues Under the Stars

July is when Tuscany's calendar of centuries-old traditions collides with its calendar of open-air festivals, and for a few weeks the region runs on very little sleep. It's also properly hot inland, which is exactly why so much of Tuscan life — opera, horse races, concerts — moves outdoors and after dark this month.

Where to go

Siena hosts the first running of the Palio, its bareback horse race around Piazza del Campo, on 2 July — ten horses, three breakneck laps, ninety seconds, and a piazza packed with tens of thousands of Sienese who take the result more seriously than almost anything else in their calendar. The four days surrounding the race (parades, trial runs, blessings of the horses in each contrada's own church) are, if anything, more interesting than the race itself for a first-time visitor.

Pistoia's Piazza del Duomo turns into an open-air concert venue for the Pistoia Blues Festival, running early July — a genuine rarity for a city this size, drawing major international names to a stage set against a Romanesque cathedral façade.

On the coast, Torre del Lago, on the shore of Lake Massaciuccoli near Viareggio, stages the Puccini Festival — the only opera festival in the world dedicated entirely to Giacomo Puccini, performed in a 3,000-seat open-air theatre a few hundred metres from the house where he composed Madama Butterfly and Turandot. The season typically opens mid-July and runs into September.

What to eat

Peak summer means peak tomatoes, peaches, and the first ripe figs — look for pappa al pomodoro (a thick bread-and-tomato soup, better cold than it sounds) on countryside menus, alongside chilled Vernaccia or Vermentino whites, which suit the heat far better than Chianti's reds this time of year.

Worth timing your trip around

The Palio di Siena on 2 July and the Pistoia Blues Festival in early July are both fixed, well-established annual dates; the Puccini Festival's opening night shifts slightly year to year (mid-to-late July), so it's worth checking the season's exact programme before booking tickets.

Why stay at Redolina

July's best experiences are scattered — Siena to the south, Pistoia on the doorstep, Torre del Lago and the coast to the west. Redolina's central position between Florence and Lucca means none of them requires an overnight stay elsewhere, letting you build a week around opera one night and a horse race the next without repacking a bag.